What You SHOULD Eat Before Your Workouts: This May Surprise You

What Jon Benson Has To Say About Eating Before Your Workouts:

“What should I eat before my workouts if I want to get rid of body fat?”

My Answer Is?

NOTHING.

I’ve been saying this for almost a decade now… and research is catching up with the idea.

It’s nice to be right. : )

Several studies have validated and confirmed that exercising while your body is low on food may be a good way to trim excess fat.

European researchers found that cyclists who trained without eating burned significantly more fat than their counterparts who ate. Now, this is important: Cycling requires a LOT of energy. Far more energy than you need to get rid of bodyfat.

Working out with weights and doing moderate to intense (but short) cardio will take care of 99% of your needs when it comes to fatburning.

But with weights, and especially with the cyclists that were tested, performance could be an issue.

In fact the members of the group of cyclists that didn’t eat performed worse on the intensive training. Still, they burned a higher proportion of fat to carbohydrates than the group that ate. (Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, the journal of the American College of Sports Medicine.)

Why? Simple. Your body’s blood sugar is lowest in the morning prior to eating. When you train, either moderately or with intensity, most of your bodies fuel comes from your body-fat and NOT the ingested carbs. Pretty cool huh?

So… what would you rather burn… bodyfat or carbs?

Yeah, me too. : )

About performance:

I have found that my performance only suffers slightly when fasting and training for the first few weeks. After that my performance increases. The body starts to burn its own bodfyat far more efficiently so I find I have PLENTY of energy.

This was not a lone study on fasting and training. In a 2008 study, Hespel and colleagues tested the effects on men who did endurance training without eating versus those who ate. In the athletes who hadn’t eaten, the researchers found a spike in the amount of proteins needed to process fat, meaning their bodies had been primed through fasting to get rid of more bodyfat.

So, now you know the answer to the old question: “What should I foods should I consume before training?”